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Publication

Market Report: Romania

The annual guide to the global live entertainment ticketing business
Click the interactive map below to explore the top 66 global markets

Post-Covid, the Romanian ticketing market has, according to Andreea Pop, CEO of Bilete.ro, become increasingly fragmented.

“Major companies are seeking to enter all areas of entertainment, while smaller entities are focusing on niche events,” she says, adding that attendance numbers are rising, as promoters try to bring bigger and higher quality productions into the country and that “people are just discovering their appetite for events – Romania is an emerging market ripe for picking.”

Primary ticketing
The two biggest companies remain iabilet.ro and bilete.ro, the latter of which was bought two years go by dominant Baltic ticketing firm the Piletilevi Group. Other players include Entertix and MyTicket, operating under one company but with two brands, and CTS Eventim. There’s also bilet.ro, a niche white-label company.

Distribution of sales
According to Emil Ionescu, general managing partner of iabilet.ro, 99% of the tickets they sell are online. But while Pop notes that the pandemic significantly increased people’s engagement with digital tickets, there is still a noticeable preference for cash payments. “In our business, 25% of the market still demands printed physical tickets,” she says.

Secondary ticketing
“Locally, there are no players on the secondary ticketing market,” says Guido Janssens, managing partner of promoter Emagic. “Obviously, the usual suspects like Viagogo and StubHub rear their heads once we put major international acts on sale.”

“Locally, there are no players on the secondary ticketing market”

Bilete.ro is planning to deliver a secondary market solution in the near future, and Eventim has already introduced its fanSALE platform for large events. “The platform provides a secure and easy-to-use way for fans to resell their tickets, ensuring a reliable and trustworthy experience, says Miroslav Emanoilov of Eventim Romania.

Cultural analysis
Romania remains a tricky territory for promoters. “Pre-pandemic, Romania was well on its way to become a more mature event market, with more fans buying their tickets shortly after the show was announced,” says Janssens. “But Covid reversed this trend.”

“We are repositioning ourselves as more than just a ticketing company to support the ticket sales with our marketing and data analysis.”

“The market is getting more and more demanding as we see a rise in expectations from promoters who see us as an extension of their marketing team and where we are being asked to provide quality marketing services to our partners,” says Eventim’s Emanoilov.

“We are repositioning ourselves as more than just a ticketing company to support the ticket sales with our marketing and data analysis.”

There’s also a complicated – and expensive – labyrinth of tax regulations to navigate.

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